Activist for East Timor, Acheh and Palestine, Vaclava ‘Vacy’ Julie Vlazna was born 31 August 1946 in Susice in the region of Bohemia after her parents survived the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in WWII.

As a baby, she nearly died of an infection but received new antibiotics in a trial and fortunately survived. The family fled the Russian occupation of their homeland, and migrated to Australia on the Castel Bianco arriving in October 1949. Vacy thanked her parents Jiri and Vlasta Vlazna for her “political genes”. Growing up in Sydney, Vacy recalled they all “copped the usual offensives, ‘wog’, bloody new Australian’, ‘go back to where you came from,’” so when she visited the Czech Republic in the 1990s she was keen ” to experience wall-to-wall Czechs”. However, she wrote, “the mono-carpet lacking multicultural flair made me feel as alien as I had in Australia. On the plane back … I realised that … Australia was my home.” Vacy became a citizen on 11 January 1995.

Vacy, tall and striking, with a wide gentle smile, was briefly married at age 18. Her second marriage, to Terry Fitzgerald, produced two children: Danielle (1970) and Alan (1972). After divorce in 1977, Vacy became a sole parent, who was studying for an arts degree via correspondence through the University of New England (UNE). After completion in 1983 and a Diploma of Education from the University of Sydney in 1984, she qualified as a high school English teacher. Her passion for study was only spent after completing a doctoral........

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